Hollande’s credibility is around his ankles

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France does care. And that will harm the President’s drive for economic reform

François Hollande has finally confessed. The front page of Libération proclaimed yesterday: “Hollande liberated.” Eighteen months into his presidency, the French leader has finally come clean, albeit leaving many supporters feeling betrayed. He has unashamedly declared: “I am a social democrat.”

That may not have been the admission the world was expecting when Mr Hollande held forth for nearly three hours at his press conference on Tuesday. Yet it was important. He was announcing his embrace of the market-friendly reforms that he and his true Socialist brethren have shunned for decades as a sell-out to capitalism, even if they applied